expectations from that time. Once we got there, however we were faintly disappointed. Where were the jaguars and the macaws shown in the

Discovery channel? Why was I not able to see every bee that landed on

every leaf, and see how the piranhas interacted with each other? After the

first few hours, our expectations adjusted – we were in real life, not

on a television show and we went on to have a wonderful vacation.

But I remember well that first moment of

disappointment. Years of reading books and seeing pictures of the

dense jungle of Brazil and Peru had made me believe that the minute I

stepped foot on the Amazon, I would be beset by wildlife so unique and

colorful that I would be made breathless with delight. Real life,

without the aid of telephoto lens and edited video, included boring

moments where we actually had to wait to see birds and animals. They did not

dance into our vision, like I had somehow been expecting.

Our previous experience was strong in our memory when Arvind and I

went to the Pantanal last week. The world’s largest wetlands, stretching to more than 60,000 square miles, and home to 1000 species of birds, about 500 species of reptiles and 300 species of animals, the Pantanal is an ecological wonderland. We had heard of the wilderness from our

guide, Vicente in the Amazon, and as Arvind and I drove up from

Bonito, we saw a jungle so dense and green, so alive with birds and

crocodiles that it felt like it would drive poor old Discovery Channel

to shame. And this time, perhaps because we had so few expectations

from the jungle and were content just to bask in its leafy foliage, we

saw a laundry-list of exotic animals – iguanas and armadillos, and

king-fishers and cormorants and blue macaws, jabiru birds, Toucan

birds, a river otter, a Paraguayan lizard, a kind of fox, howler

monkeys, a new kind of deer, and under horrible circumstances, an ant

eater.

So, we saw a lot of stuff. One would say that our Pantanal experience

was just wonderful. And really, it was. The sight of the gigantic

wetlands, stretching in a thousand shades of green, alive with the

cries of howler monkeys and birds, and at night, alight with stars and fireflies, was beyond anything National Geographic or the Travel Channel

could ever present. The river, snaking its way along the

shallow, verdant land, was quivering with fish and crocodiles, and

every morning cormorants would wake to catch fish and capibaras sun

themselves in the forest clearings.

Toucan bird

It should have been paradisical, no? We had traveled to the jungle,

we had seen many animals. What more could we ask for? Yet, the first

two nights, Arvind and I lay awake in our moonlit bed, listening to the

night-calls of birds, unable to sleep, stiff with sorrow and

confusion. Our sense of feeling mixed up increased during our

four night stay in the forest and even as we left, we felt that our

world, usually so vivid and bright, had taken on too many shades of

gray, and we were unsure about how to feel about most of it.

Instead of drawing this out, let me tell you what happened.

What propelled our confusions was a moment in the jungle. We had gone on

a safari in an open van, where a whole lot of us were peering into

the wilderness, hoping to catch a glimpse of wild-life. It was a

lovely day, blue skies, parrots cawing all over the place, the jungle

glowing with life. We’d already seen a few crocodiles, a few

capibaras, a fox – and we were quite content to just bump along in the

rattly jeep. If we chanced to spot something more exotic – maybe an

armadillo or a lizard – we’d be pleased, but at that moment it did not

feel important. Right about then, something large and long skittered

into view. A brief moment – a sight of its elegant, long, snout – a

giant ant-eater! wow! – and the beast dashed back into the long

grass. Arvind and I had actually spotted the lovely long face, the

bumpy body – so maybe that’s why we were delighted and felt that the

momentary glimpse was quite adequate. The giant ant-eater is a shy,

skittish animal – that much we surmised by the jittery way it

reacted when it saw us, and we genuinely felt that as the animal had

already run back into the wilderness, our jeep would move on.

But no. Many of

the others had not seen the ant-eater. We were told to get off the

jeep, and the guides ran into the forest. A tourist ran after him. The

rest of us did not really know what we were supposed to do, so we went

a little further into the forest. I wish now that we had not.

The guides, I guess, we hoping to disturb the poor ant eater and

chase it out into the open again, where the rest of the jeep could

catch a sight of the animal and maybe take a few photos for friends at home. But when the ant eater saw us in the

clearing, it tried to get back into the thicket. Then the tourist,

altruistically hoping to help the others see the animal from up close, caught hold of the poor,

terrified animal and wrestled it down to the ground.

The poor ant eater

It was horrible. Horrible. The tourist had caught the gentle, long haired creature by the fur,

and was tugging at the hair in an effort to keep it down. The ant-eater’s long,

sensitive face, its frightened, desperate eyes, the efforts to get

away – oh, it was awful. I don’t suppose I shall ever forget it. The

poor, gentle thing, all it had done was let itself be viewed by idiot

tourists, all it wanted was to go back to its home.

I was shouting by this time – amazingly, I was the only one -

although the others were looking just as stunned as I felt, no

one was shouting for the animal’s release. Isn’t that shocking? As a

race, do we prize politeness over compassion? Anyhow, finally the

guides took my side and the poor ant eater was released and it

ran back into the jungle. I don’t know whether it has gotten over its

ordeal yet. I think about it everyday now, at odd moments – the narrow

face, the unexpected resemblance to an Irish setter, the grace of its slow

movements, its terror.

That night, Arvind and I went to bed all stiff with horror. I know that I was

enraged with the horrible tourist, furious with the long lack of reaction from the guides,

angry at all of us who had stood around while the animal was man-handled.

Next morning, I was overwhelmed with feelings, and could barely get myself to go on

the scheduled nature walk. But I am glad I did. Even though I started with eyes puffy with lack of sleep and a face sullen with anger, the hike helped me.

Right away, the forest

wielded its unique magic – the swishy leaves, the running river, the

birds – for a long time we saw nothing and the patient hike calmed my

nerves. I looked about me, at the forest, at my hiking mates. I looked at my guide.

He had grown up in the Pantanal, never been away from the area. He

ran his hands along the trees as he moved, stopped to look at the

flowers. Once when I commented on how wonderful the woods smelled his

face lit up. In a jungle full of spiders and snakes, he was

barefooted. His arm was full of mosquito bites. Every few minutes, he

stopped to listen to the sounds of the woods and unerringly led us to

wildlife that we would not even have noticed, if not for his sense of

the forest and the ways of the jungle.

I looked about at the tourists.

Two of them were Swiss, three from Amsterdam, two from Sao Paulo. The

dutch family had taken a twenty-for hour flight, and then an overnight

bus from Sao Paulo. They had researched this holiday all year, they told us

later. They really loved animals, they said, and were so

pleased to have seen an anaconda. I did not ask how much this

vacation was costing, but I bet it had been hard to afford.

I looked about at the jungle, the tall woody trees, the macaws, the parrots,

the armadillos. I considered how much it cost to keep the poachers

out, to keep the trees from being cut down to make way for roads and development, for the constant police surveillance.

My upsetness did not fade out of me, as much as it changed. It was

awful how animals were chased and tormented to appease the tourist’s

hunger to view exotic wild-life. That much was certain. The jaguar, the ant eater, the crocodile, the anaconda are all shy, nervous creatures and must be treated with respect and dignity. This part was clear to me.

But as I flailed about trying to find a solution to this problem – perhaps the Brazilian government should restrict the number of tourists that enter into these jungles, perhaps the guides could be more stern when they see the jungle being mistreated, perhaps tourists could learn to be more patient and not expect to see jaguars and anacondas the minute they get to the forest – as I considered and rejected each of my sorry answers – I grew more and more confused and depressed with the twists and turns of the problem.

First, about the guides. In an area as remote as the Pantanal, life

is harsh. There are really no real jobs that can support a family. The guide is directly indebted to the tourist for his

livelihood, sorry as it is. I suppose that the guides are lucky to have their ill-paid gigs. If a tourist,

however brainless, complains about the behavior of a guide, I don’t think that

other jobs would be easy to find.

And the tourist. It’s so easy to point fingers at the tourist. If you

want a petting zoo, why not just go to one? Once you get to a jungle,

you really have to be very lucky to spot anything larger than a

mosquito. Or maybe a parrot. One can not come to a jungle for two

days, and expect to see a jaguar. Really, this is unacceptable. But, the coin has two sides. Like my dutch friends, and like us, folks

travel a long and uncomfortable way and spend a lot of hard earned

money to spend some of their vacation time around animals. They wake

at four a.m. They endure endless mosquito bites, they hike through

the rain, to catch a glimpse of something they have read about as

children. If, in their time in the Pantanal, all they see is a frog,

hearts do sink. For all my brave words, I wonder what my position

would have been had I only seen a parrot, of the kind that’s so very

common in the Bay area. Would I have been such an animal activist

then? I really cant say.

The forest too, is implicated in the mix. Giant, unending, vast -

these are all words used while describing the Pantanal. But this

massive wilderness is constantly under threat – from deforestation,

from loggers, from poachers. Preventing these forces are costly. Tourism brings much needed money into the area, and spreads awareness about its

existence, and this mix of publicity and finances helps the Pantanal continue to exist and not make way for farms and cities.

All these shades of gray. My four days in the Pantanal were ruined by

my restless mind, my hopeless attempts to straighten out this tangled

web of right and wrong. If tourists did not spot animals they would

not come back, and then money to protect the forest and the

animals would disappear. If the guides raised a fuss about the

behavior of the tourists, then they would be fired, and what

employment would they find in a place like the Pantanal? Perhaps

tourists could be less desperate to see wildlife and treat the forest

with respect, but if you have spent thousands of dollars and all your

vacation time to get to a remote wilderness, perhaps you’d be really

keen to see a macaw too.

Oh, it’s all too much for me. Each time I look closely at any one source of the problem – the guide, the tourist, the tourism industry – instead of anger, I feel a confused compassion. In the shoes of the guide, of the tourist, of the threatened wilderness, would I do any better than them?

The only thing I feel sure of is the

plight of the poor, trembling ant eater, trapped by the tourist and so